A Rotten House Guest
by StitchAndRepair
Summary: Ian was nineteen and now a high school graduate. He was better, he was good. He was getting there.


Title from a book by Marya Hornbacher that I haven't read yet (but I'm 30 pages into Wasted by her and it is the most amazing writing I have ever read)

Um, so I'm in a really, really shitty mood and instead of talking about things like a normal person I vented by writing this.

So there.

Enjoy.

**Warnings:** Mentions of mental illness. A lot of this is based off of personal experience and I know it differs from person to person so I hope it doesn't offend anybody. That's not my intent.

* * *

Frank had always hated that Ian looked like Monica.

He used to be Franks shoulders when he came in drunk and happy.

But then Monica left. It was bad after she had gone. Ian would sometimes wake up and Frank would be staring blankly at him, a beer bottle to his lips and he would look at Ian with a flash of pain and hurt and anger for just a moment before his eyes steeled and his face went blank again.

He rarely looked Ian in the eyes. Even after all these years. That's where he saw Monica the most.

#

They first noticed that something was wrong when Monica baked 750 cookies for no reason.

They had all followed the scent of warm cookie dough and melted chocolate down the stairs, stumbled down to the breakfast table, Debbie in Fiona's arms, and scoffed down as many cookies as they could.

Ian, five, ate so many that his stomach swelled. He threw up ten minutes later.

The cookies had multiplied by the time they all got home from school. Fiona picked them up, walked them home and asked them how their day was. She had a smile on her face, despite the dark circles under her eyes, and she held Ian's hand in her own and her and Lip swung him until his feet lifted from the ground and his eyes stung with tears from laughing so hard.

When they arrived home there was no space anywhere in the kitchen. Every counter top, the table, the washer and dryer, the fridge, they were filled with all different kinds of cookies. And still Monica stood with a smile on her face and a mixing bowl in her hand.

For days after that Monica took Ian and Lip everywhere. Monica took them from school, made them promise to never tell Fiona, and took them to the park. She pushed them high on the swings, flew down the slide with them and span them too fast on the roundabout. Ian puked in the bushes and saw stars in his eyes and he never stopped smiling.

The next day they went to a store and Monica filled their pockets and pushed them outside, kissing the security guard on the mouth when he went to say something in protest. She grabbed their hands and she ran. They ran until they were out of breath and then Monica laughed. She laughed and laughed, tears running like rivers down her face. She laughed long after Ian and Lip stopped finding it funny.

The crash came after three weeks. Frank returned home after being missing for eight weeks. Monica greeted him with a kiss, passionate and loving. Affectionate in a way they hadn't been since their MDMA run in the summer before Debbie had been born. Ian hadn't known what MDMA was back then, wouldn't find out until he was nine and Monica threw a party and he took the 'candy' that Kerise - the bouncer that his mom had been seeing while Frank was missing once again - drunkenly offered him and he saw colors that had never existed before. But then, aged 5 and living off of stale cookies and reheated meatballs from a can that Fiona made him, Ian watched as Monica clung to Frank like he was oxygen and she was desperate for breath.

Two days after Frank's return, Ian bounced down the stairs nice and early and sat at the kitchen table ready for breakfast. Instead of Monica wide-eyed and grinning as she prepared more cookies, he was met with darkness. All the downstairs lights were off. He switched the light on and saw Monica laying on the couch, curled in on herself and sobbing silently. He called out to her, she had been 'mom' back then and not like he calls her now, and shook her shoulder but she never responded. She barely blinked, didn't seem aware of him.

She lay on the couch for five days before Fiona managed to get her to a doctor. Fiona, barely 12, missed school to dress Monica and walk her the four blocks to the doctors. Gallaghers never asked for help, that had always been the rule, and Ian knew that things were bad when Monica came home 72 hours later with leaflets and bottles of medication and a newly diagnosed illness.

At first Ian had thought that bipolar was like the flu, had made his mom chicken soup and rubbed Vicks on her chest while she slept. Fiona gave Monica her pills and she began to get better. There were no more cookies, no more tears from laughing so hard, but there was also no crying so Ian had smiled and hugged his mom and told her that he was glad she was better and that her bipolar had cleared up.

Lip had called him an idiot, told him that bipolar didn't go away. Even at six, almost seven, he had been too smart for his age. He had studied bipolar, researched it until he knew everything his young brain could possibly take in. Ian didn't understand much of what Lip explained to him, but he knew what meant. . He knew that it meant Monica was on her medication for life.

Ian grew older and more curious. After two more manic highs and crashing lows and the birth of his little brother, he asked Fiona to explain it to him. It's just a part of her brain, Fiona had said, it works itself too hard sometimes. Runs too high for a while before it wears out and switches off.

He had understood it at the time, believed it. It was an easy explanation for his young mind and he had been satisfied with the answer. He learned to tell the difference between a good day and a bad day, he learned to recognize when Monica was high from her meds and high from what she was taking when she was off them. He learned that his mother's illness was a part of her and it wasn't going away.

But Ian was 18 now. He had come back from the hospital after 72 hours with a leaflet and a bottle of prescription medication. He wore scars on his wrists, physical reminders of his lows and a tattoo of an eagle on his ribcage as a reminder of his manic high.

He was 18 now and he knew that bipolar couldn't be cured with chicken soup. He knew that it was permanent and incurable. He knew that it was a part of him that wouldn't go away.

His illness sat between him and the rest of his family at the dinner table like an uninvited guest. A rude uncle that nobody could look away from, who belched too loudly and ate with his mouth open. His illness wasn't just a switch in his brain that worked itself too hard, it was the hitch in his sister's breath when he walked down the stairs and she realized that today was a good day. It was the flicker of concern in his brother's eyes when somebody made an inappropriate joke or called themselves depressed after the Bears lost a game. It was the cut off arguments, the swallowed back words that his boyfriend would never say in case it triggered something in him that would send him spiraling.

His illness wasn't just a part of him, it was a part of everybody around him.

#

Ian was nineteen and now a high school graduate.

He was better, he was good. He was getting there.

People's eyes still lingered on the scars on his wrists and his family watched him like a hawk as he swallowed his medication every morning, but things were easier now.

He understood his illness, could tell the difference between a good day and a bad day by the tension above his eyes when he woke up.

Mickey lay with him on his bad days, smoking too much and complaining about everything and acting so normal that even now, after all this time, it caused Ian's heart to trip over itself in his chest.

His family were smiling again, laughing and telling inappropriate jokes at the dinner table. Lip was at college, Liam was at school now. Carl had a juvenile probation worker after a bank robbery with his girlfriend went wrong, and Debbie was dating guys her own age.

Frank was alive, well, but he never came around anymore.

#

Ian's eyes were glazed over, dulled from his medication.

He looked in the mirror and saw his mother's glazed over eyes staring back at him.

Frank had always hated him for looking like his mother.

Frank never looked at him now.


End file.
